A photographic history of Apple products (pictures)

Apple II Plus

A new photography project and a just released book by Jonathan Zufi, "Iconic: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation," chronicles the life of Apple products in pictures. It's a beautiful look at everything Apple has ever made.

Zufi collected more than 500 products and took more than 150,000 photos for his project. The result is a simple, clean collection fit for any Apple fanatic. The book itself is 326 pages with more 650 photographs, but the Web site goes even deeper, displaying more than 3,500 photographs of iconic, classic, and rare Apple products.

In addition to the iPhones and MacBooks that are still around today, Zufi's collection also includes special limited release developer models and products which where made but cancelled before being widely released.

The Apple II Plus, seen here, was released in 1979 and retailed for $1,195. It shipped with 16KB, 32KB, or 48KB of main RAM, which was expandable to 64KB by means of the Language Card, an expansion card that could be installed.

Newton MessagePad

Featuring a 20MHz ARM 610 processor, 4MB of ROM, 640K of SRAM, and infrared-beaming capabilities in a compact handheld case with a pressure-sensitive display, the original Newton MessagePad was one of the first handheld systems to attempt to recognize natural handwriting and use a basic form of artificial intelligence.

Apple Disk II external storage

The first external storage device built for the Apple II was the Apple Disk II, which increased the computer's capabilities with a floppy disk drive for storing up to 140K on each disk. The separate controller card allowed support for up to two drives per controller.

Apple IIe Joystick

The first gaming joystick made for the Apple II computers was the Apple IIe Joystick. This device was the next generation gaming/graphics control device which followed the Apple II and Apple IIe hand controllers.

Macintosh 128K

The first Mac, the Macintosh 128K, was a computer was originally planned to be released with a Twiggy floppy disk drive, similar to the one used in the Apple Lisa 1 computer.

High error rates with the Twiggy disk drive though forced Apple to switch over to the 400K Sony 3.5-inch disk drive in the last two or three months before the Macintosh's scheduled release on January 24, 1984.

Macintosh Plus

The Macintosh Plus computer, the third model in the Macintosh line, launched in 1986 with a retail price of $2,600. The Mac Plus shipped with 1MB RAM, an external SCSI peripheral bus, and could run System 7.

The 800K drive stores more system programs and applications on a dual-sided 3.5-inch disk and still leaves space for data files. The 800K drive operates at twice the speed of the 400K drive.

PowerBook 160

The PowerBook 160, which was released in 1992, introduced grayscale video to the PowerBook line. It was also the first model to support an external monitor using Apple proprietary VID-14 connector, and it was the first to allow more than 8MB RAM.

Unifile Twiggy floppy drive

Created in 1983, the Unifile Twiggy floppy drive was an innovative double-sided drive that had heads on opposite sides of the spindle. The Twiggy disks offered an extremely large capacity of over 800K.

Though the Unifile was announced by Apple, the program was canceled before it ever shipped. It was intended to Apple II and Apple III computers, but the Twiggy drive was only ever used in the Lisa I. Many of the drives were made, but then the product was canned and most of the units were destroyed.

iPad

The iPad, launched in April 2010, gave birth to an entire to category of device, the tablet. The iPad had a 9.7-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology at 1024x768-pixel resolution.